Pendennis

What has happened to the Labour Party's mooted faith task force? It was due to be launched in July as a fundraising and policy devising body but, four months later, has yet to meet.

'There isn't a faith task force,' Stephen Timms, the party's vice-chairman with responsibility for faith issues, told me last week. 'My personal view is that it might be useful and that it would report to me, but we need to establish clearly what it would do and who's going to be involved.'

This is what politicians might refer to as 'distancing' yourself from the original plans. The chair was due to be held by Anthony Bailey, the millionaire public-relations executive who is a somewhat colourful figure on the international stage.

He once tried to give £500,000 to the Labour party, only to have it returned because Lord Levy was concerned that it was actually being put up by foreign businessmen.

Bailey, it should be noted, maintains that the money was his own and he later successfully donated £50,000. Among the many positions he holds is the mystifying title of Inter-faith Delegate of the Constantinian Order (whose membership includes Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General) and that of Ambassador at Large for Gambia, though the Gambian high commission in London doesn't seem to know much about him ('I have no idea'; 'I don't know'; "He has no office here'). Says Bailey: 'I was appointed by the President; now you can see why they ask people like me to help.'

Bailey, who has just married an Austrian princess, tells me he has a meeting with Timms scheduled to decide 'how, when and what' is now going to happen' to the task force. For his part, Timms explains: 'There has been a hiatus.' Watch this space.

Charles's pillow talk

Anthony Eden's widow Clarissa will not be welcome at Clarence House any time soon. In her recently published memoir, she recalls an encounter with Prince Charles, left, in April 1955, when he was six. 'Anthony sits on a cushion. When he moves to help someone, the prince sits on it. The Queen tells him to move, he refuses; she tells him again because it is the Prime Minister's cushion and he is tired. The prince says, "I'm tired too, I've been running about" and he doesn't budge.'

A royal spokesman sniffs: 'It's anecdotal and we can't comment on conversations that may or may not have taken place. But we wouldn't trouble the prince with that anyway.'

Charles is just back from running about in Turkey.

Brand awareness

Performers at the Royal Variety Performance in Liverpool on 3 December in aid of the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund include, a Buckingham Palace press release boasts, Kiri Te Kanawa, James Blunt, Joan Rivers, Katherine Jenkins, Seal and Russell Brand. Yes, the same Russell Brand who caused all sorts of fuss when he hosted the Brit Awards live on TV this year. His performance drew 300 complaints to ITV. A few were upset by comments about David Cameron and drug rehabilitation, but the majority were outraged by the following reflection: 'Can you genuinely say that if someone gives you an envelope with a photo of the Queen's privates inside, you wouldn't have a look?' A palace source says they intend to request that no such references are made in front of HM, but you have to wonder what will be going through her (and his) mind as they shake hands after the show.

Good lord - the cheek of the man

Recently, a London taxi picked up Liberal Democrat Lord Watson of Richmond at the peers' entrance of the Houses of Parliament. As they were pulling out into traffic, the cabbie slid back the window glass and said: 'No disrespect, My Lord - just curious. How much did you pay?' Of course the peerage bestowed upon Watson, a former president of the Liberal Party, general good egg and even holder of the German Order of Merit, is beyond reproach.

You didn't think he lived there for free?

Here, at last, is news that Gordon Brown's favourite Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown, left, does pay something towards his grace and favour residence in Admiralty House. Thanks to a question in Parliament (nothing gets past those inquisitive MPs), it recently emerged that the apartment qualifies for council tax band H. I can now reveal that he dips into his own pocket to meet this charge - a hefty £1,363.36 per annum. Regular readers may remember that his taxpayer-funded office costs and minister's salary amount to some £150,000.

Large ones all round at Speccy

The latest Spectator magazine is padded with 'Advertisement Features', which are ads dressed up to look like editorial copy. One is about a shooting trip organised to celebrate the award of whisky of the year to Ardbeg, written by Oscar Humphries, socialite son of Dame Edna's creator Barry. It's an intriguing pairing, as young Oscar is teetotal. But the piece must have paid well.

Chocs away for Jilly Cooper

Jilly Cooper has been snubbed by Cadbury's. When the chocolate manufacturer was approached by the producers of the forthcoming ITV adaptation of Octavia, starring Tamsin Egerton, seeking permission to use a Flake bar in what sources describe as 'a seductive scene', permission was refused. 'It's not the sort of project we want to be associated with,' it said. Cooper finds this funny. 'I don't blame them,' she tells me. 'Octavia behaves very badly and it's terribly embarrassing.' The author then discloses that she has a cameo role in the series. 'When I first turned up, I was horrified because they have set it in the 1970s and everyone was wandering around in flares and terrible hair. I was dying for a drink and saw these tables of wonderful looking cocktails, only it was all just coloured water. But it was great fun and I'm sure it will be excellent.'

Pssst control

An intriguing footnote to the Labour donations scandal. Among the genuine donors to the party is a company called Finsbury Ltd, which has given £9,475. The non-executive director of Finsbury is Karl Milner, who was implicated in the 'Lobbygate' cash-for-access scandal of 1998 when he passed a confidential select committee report to an under

Following the loss of those 25 million child benefit details, HM Revenue and Customs has put a blanket ban on the sending out of any bulk data while it 'reviews internal security procedures'. This is causing considerable problems for the country's touring bands, choirs and orchestras, which all need to get their hands on a particular document (the E101 if you're interested, which proves they pay National Insurance in the UK) in order to be paid by foreign tour organisers.